Back To The Old Ways

I suppose I should've jumped into the Edit Pass 2 by starting at the beginning. I had worked my way up to page 69 early on. But... there were things I had to check and soon I was hopping around. This is not a bad thing at all, because the point of Edit Pass 2 is to fill in all the people and place names that are currently missing or labeled Xxx.

And sometimes that's not a linear process.

You can't just have a cafe -- it has a name. You don't just have a mountain or a hill -- they have names. The kingdom has been around for a long time. There are several languages around. There are older names and newer names -- things sometimes get more than one name. And some of the names are given as English translations, in order to facilitate reading by the target English language audience...

So far this week I have handled quite a number of the Big Names -- like the doctor and the name of the cafe in the village. I always have problems with names. This time it is exacerbated by needed to check vocabulary in Latin, Danish and Norwegian. Was very proud of myself last night, coming up with a name which turned out to be the correct two words compounded in Danish for what I wanted. I am nowhere even close to speaking or reading Danish, but it is far less unfamiliar than it was when I started on this back in September 2014.

Of course, more story keeps on leaking in. Well, maybe that's not true. Two story bits were ones which when originally written early on were disposed of in just a couple of sentences. Now that I have the whole story spread out in front of me, it is important that these become fully developed scenes. You don't just give your main character pneumonia, sedate them and then deal with them after their partway into their recovery. (evil-grin) No. As Jeffrey Ford kept telling us at Clarion -- things gotta cost. The earlier writing were markers as I raced to fill in all this story I had pouring out, rather than mere laziness. Now I can take my time.

And then there are new bits. Chekhov's gun kind of things that happen in Book 1 Part II and Part III, or even Book 2, have to be set up in Part I and Part II. Now that I am adding in the characters by name, some of their history and attributes get filled in, too. One thing affects everything else.

I still think I am on track to get Edit Pass 2 done Real Soon Now. But by doing these other bits, there should be even less to Edit Pass 3 where I really do a full read through looking for nits before locking in the Beta test read version.

This is not the first book I've written. I have three massive works I started over the past 20-30 years, with tons of writing, but never put together and made coherent. Two novels I've finished. One was sent out to a beta reader -- and it needs some work. The second has actually been shopped twice. Each of these has needed a slightly different procedure. I am trying to be as organized as I can, since this novel has sprawled way beyond what would be the first book I will try to market.

And so far, it really pleases me.

I have two possible Beta readers now who have daughters in the 5th to 7th grade range who read YA SF/F. This is potentially part of my target audience, so I should be able to get some comments from a range of people, not just writers.

New Researches: Off-label use of Fentanyl for pneumonia intubation IV sedation.

That may seem like an odd bit of research, but you know the odd adage -- write what you know? Well, this is what I think I was on two summers ago in the ICU. And I had the weirdest dreams/hallucinations. (grin)